How to Estimate Your Prostate Cancer Cure Odds
If you are one of the tens of thousands of men diagnosed this year with prostate cancer, read on to find out how to estimate your chances of a cure.
Don’t panic! Prostate cancer is common, but dying from it is not. 1 in 6 men will be diagnosed, but the majority of those diagnosed early can be cured. If you have been diagnosed, here’s how you can find the odds of successful treatment. Be diligent and thorough—there is probably no reason to rush. Prostate cancer takes decades to develop, and a few days or weeks of research and reflection will help you make wise decisions about treatment.
Obtain your complete medical record. Don’t depend on your memory, or notes jotted down at the doctor’s office. The record belongs to you—just ask for it. You may have to pay a small processing fee, but it’s well worth it.
From your biopsy pathology report, write down your Gleason score, how many cores were taken, and how many were positive for cancer out of the total. You will also need your PSA and clinical stage. If your clinical stage was not given, you can figure this out yourself—if the cancer was found by biopsy triggered by elevated PSA only (the doctor doesn’t feel it), it’s T1c. If the doctor can palpate (feel) the cancer upon rectal exam, it’s T2, etc. See “How is Prostate Cancer Staged?” by the American Cancer Society for more information.
Go to Uropredict on the Bostwick Laboratories website. Put in the required information, which includes whether or not the cancer was unifocal (found in only one spot). Click on “Run Uropredict”. You will see probabilities of organ-confined disease, extra-prostatic extension, and seminal vesicle involvement.
Go to the Johns Hopkins website and run the Partin and Han tables. The Partin tables predict the probability that your cancer has spread, while the Han tables predict the likelihood of a recurrence after surgery, should you decide on prostatectomy.
Go to the nomograms page on the Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center website. Use the Pre-Treatment Prediction Tool.
To understand all of this in context, buy a copy of “Dr. Patrick Walsh’s Guide to Surviving Prostate Cancer”, 2007 edition. Keep in mind that you are an individual, not a statistic. The above tools do not predict the outcome for an individual with certainty, but rather provide a rough estimate upon which to plan a course of action.
Take the information you have uncovered, along with your questions, to your doctor.
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